The hot breeding blanket segment of a DEMO reactor is during the maintenance transported in the so-called transport cask. Due to the residual heat resulting from the activation of materials due to irradiation during the nuclear reaction, the segment is heated internally. The surrounding air in the cask gets locally heated, which causes a natural convection to establish between the segment and the cask's walls. The circulation of air provides a passive cooling mechanism for the system.
We performed a numerical analysis of the cooling of a single breeding blanket segment using the ANSYS Fluent 2021.R2 solver. A coupled model of conjugate heat transfer was used, and the S2S model was employed to describe the radiation.
The analysis showed that natural convection in the cask provides sufficient cooling for removing the residual heat. The temperature of the breeding blanket segment with the initial temperature of 100 °C is expected to stabilise at approximately 60 °C.
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